Can bats and subdivision be neighbors?

Updated 5:24 pm, Friday, June 7, 2013

Millions of Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from the Bracken Bat Cave, about on recent evening.

Millions of Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from the Bracken Bat Cave, about on recent evening.

Photo: Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News

Can bats and subdivision be neighbors?

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

There are many subdivisions in this world, but there is only one Bracken Cave.

The cave is the spring and summer home to more than 10 million Mexican free-tailed bats. For 10,000 years the bats have raised their pups at the cave, but it was only a matter of time until development would find it.

Enter Galo Properties and its Crescent Hills development. As the Express-News' Colin McDonald recently reported, Galo plans to build more than 2,500 homes on 1,545 acres near the cave in Comal County.

The project has a raised a number of environmental concerns, including effects on endangered golden-cheek warblers and development on top of the Edwards Aquifer.

But it is the bats, and whether potentially 10,000 people should live so close to the bats, that have caught this community's attention.

“As much as we as bat conservationists don't like raising this issue, we have serious concerns about putting these people in suburban settings with dense lawns, street lights, swimming pools and porch lights in contact with these bats,” said Andrew Walker, executive director of Bat Conservation International, which protects the cave.

The concern is a Crescent Hills resident will contract rabies from the bats, which will lead to uproar about the nearby bat cave.

Galo has hired Gene Dawson, of Pape-Dawson Engineers, to plan the project.

Dawson said he is open to talks, but he also thinks the concern is being blown out of proportion.

“I've tried to research the issue,” he said. “I've tried to find the science. I've tried to determine what the appropriate setbacks will be.”

The closest boundary line, he said, would be about a mile from Bracken Cave.

As the debate over Crescent Hills has roiled, questions have also been raised about San Antonio Water System providing service outside Bexar County.

“The bottom line is SAWS will be providing water to another county at the expense of San Antonio ratepayers,” SAWS board member Samuel Luna recently wrote in dissent to City Council.

Officials with SAWS told us they had no choice. The water and sewer provider's boundaries are identical to the city of San Antonio's. They follow the city's extra territorial jurisdiction into Comal County.

By denying service to Crescent Hills, SAWS officials said Galo Properties would be free to contract with smaller water providers in Comal County.

“Bats are not part of our criteria,” said Sam Mills, director of infrastructure and planning for SAWS. “Really, the staff recommendation was more, 'We found no reason to deny service to this (development).' It wasn't a promotion. It was, 'We can't deny service to this development.'”

This is certainly an understandable rationale, but we question the wisdom of providing service to Comal County given the intense water needs in Bexar County.

Clearly, this development is incompatible with the environmental concerns around it. In a perfect world, it would not be built.

But this is not a perfect world, and there is no clear solution.

The project is within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of San Antonio and Comal County, which means it could be approved by either jurisdiction.

The city has stricter zoning requirements for higher-density projects. Comal's zoning applies to lower density-projects, but has looser regulations.

Environmental groups could coalesce to buy the site, giving the bats a proper buffer from development.

“The problem on this one is going to be money,” said James Cannizzo, an environmental attorney with the U.S. Army, which has an interest in protecting the golden-cheek warbler.

“Who has that much money? Because I don't know if we are going to be able to buy the whole tract.”

If the land can't be purchased, the next best compromise would be to have all sides work to lower the project's density and create additional green space between Bracken Cave and Crescent Hills.

Then, we suggest, Galo Properties change the project's name from Crescent Hills to The Villages at the Bat Cave. It would be a more apt description of the neighborhood.